When Genya Kaplun suffered a cardiac arrest at his home in the West End, it took doctors three and a half hours of CPR to save him. Under normal circumstances, he would have been pronounced dead at his house.

“They tried to revive me and they couldn't,” he said. “I was just lucky the emergency physician said 'No! Bring him in.'”

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Only a few people have been saved by the same technology — but a new study being conducted by St. Paul's Hospital and B.C. Emergency Health Services is looking to prove just how effective it can be.

Although many of our clients are marginalized, burdened by poverty and isolated by addiction and mental illness, these are just folks getting through the day the best way they know how. And in general they manage adequately, day-to-day.
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